Wayward began as a Katrina recovery blog in 2006 but has since wandered off to consider the intersections of faith, politics, and the environment and a life lived between DC & Idaho.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

You won't believe the evil thing your favorite tech company just did

My latest email to the SierraRise community. And yes, I really did just pull an Upworthy here on Wayward. Is it really an Upworthy anymore, anyway? Buzzfeed, Godvine, even the Washington Post's Wonkblog and Know More are getting in on the act... sigh. Anyway, this is serious stuff, so moving on:

In February, a Utah slaughterhouse was caught painfully pushing a cow with a forklift. But when the police showed up, they weren't there to shut things down -- they were there to press charges against the citizen filming the cruelty, even though she never left public land. [1]

Many would call Amy Meyer a hero, but Utah called her a criminal. This is due to a new crop of state bills that ban the filming of industrial animal abuse without permission -- and even place whistleblowers on a "terrorism registry."[2]

Shockingly, Google is funding this madness.

Google recently joined ALEC, a shadowy organization that works with state lawmakers to ram through legislation for corporations like Exxon and Philip Morris. [3, 4] Google -- a major investor in clean energy -- should know better than to fund bills that would also require climate denial education in public schools and oppose fracking disclosure.

Sign the petition today, and we'll deliver it to Google during ALEC's giant December conference, which features speakers like Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan. 50,000 names will put Google on the spot!

Funded almost exclusively by major corporations like Koch Industries, ALEC -- or the American Legislative Exchange Council -- writes "model bills" for right-wing lawmakers to introduce as "grassroots" legislation. From Utah's "ag-gag" bill to "Stand Your Ground" laws and attacks on our voting rights, about 200 of these corporate scams pass every year.

One of ALEC's efforts pretends to disclose the chemicals used in fracking. But in reality, the Exxon-backed bill is pure deception, creating new loopholes that would make it even easier to hide the most toxic fracking chemicals.[5]

This agenda is so extreme that, thanks to grassroots pressure, many big-name corporations have already quit ALEC -- including McDonald's, Johnson & Johnson, and Wal-Mart. [6] Even Big Oil's own ConocoPhillips has had enough -- but not Google.

Google's supposed to be one of the good guys. It's up to us to remind them of their old "Don't be evil" motto, and bring the same public pressure that led all those other corporations to see the light.

Today's petition is just the beginning. SierraRise is teaming up with organizations like Forecast the Facts and the Center for Media and Democracy. We'll use people pressure and digital organizing -- much of it with Google's own tools -- to demand the tech giant do the right thing and leave ALEC behind.